Russian crash victims begin journey home

Relatives left tributes in the wreckage when they visited the site.

ZURICH, Switzerland (CNN) -- A Russian cargo plane arrived at Freidrichshafen airport Sunday to retrieve 20 of the bodies of victims in the midair collision over Germany that killed 71 people last week.

Fifty-two of the victims were children, most of them part of a tour group from Ufa in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan traveling on holiday to the Spanish coast north of Barcelona.

The trip ended in tragedy Monday when the Bashkirian Airlines jetliner carrying them and 17 other people collided with a DHL Boeing 757 cargo plane 11,000 feet over Ueberlingen, near Lake Constance on the German-Swiss border.

German President Johannes Rau visited the crash site Sunday where wreckage was spread across 20 miles of the countryside.

Officials said Sunday the last two victims had been found but that the search would continue for body parts. Investigators have so far identified 37 victims.

CNN NewsPass VIDEO Investigation centers on Swiss air traffic control, says CNN's Stephanie Halasz (July 4) Play video   RESOURCES Gallery: Relatives' grief  Gallery: Jets collide over Germany    MORE STORIES • Trauma for relatives  • Terror at 36,000 feet  • Children's holiday party on doomed plane  • Planes fell in 'ball of flames'  • Crash comes after air traffic change  • Midair crash: Nightmare scenario    EXTRA INFORMATION • Map: Crash area  • Details of the jets  • Major Russian crashes  • Recent plane crashes

The Swiss air traffic control organization at the center of the crash investigation announced it would to reduce its capacity by 20 percent because of the stress caused to staff. (Full story)

Skyguide spokesman Felix Hitz said the measure, which comes at the start of the busy summer holiday season in Europe, would last a few days.

The crash happened under Skyguide's watch in the Swiss-German border region.

"They are used to stress in their work, but this is another kind of stress," Hitz said.

Some flights over the area will be rerouted by Eurocontrol in Brussels. The reduction in Skyguide operations will cause delays to flights in and out of Zurich.

Alain Rossier, chief executive of Skyguide, admitted Saturday his organization may have made errors.

An investigation into the crash is under way.

Investigators said control center data indicated the Russian plane's pilot was told to begin descending 50 seconds before the accident but did not do so until 30 seconds before the crash.

They said automated signals from the cargo jet showed that 14 seconds before the crash the DHL plane also began to drop.

Russian media reported Thursday that the pilots of the Russian airliner warned Swiss air traffic controllers of the impending calamity 90 seconds before the crash and asked permission to change course.

RIA-Novosti news agency said the crew told Swiss controllers the Tupolev 154's onboard collision warning system had flashed and indicated the plane was on the same trajectory as the DHL Boeing.

Quoting unnamed Russian crash investigators at the crash site, RIA said the pilots received a reply about 40 seconds before the crash.

The German BFU investigation bureau said in a report that the Skyguide controllers' main telephone line was down while the anti-collision alert system was switched off for maintenance.

Only one Swiss air traffic controller was on duty at the time of the crash, police said. German air traffic controllers in Munich had handed over monitoring the aircraft to the Swiss about five minutes before the collision.